Not To Be Trusted With Knives

Just in time to provide some relief to my hockey withdrawal, yesterday and today was the NHL draft!  In addition to bringing in a new crop of talent to the league, this also marks a new crop of fresh meat for my hockey hotties team.  This was brought to my attention when Darren scouted out the hotness that is Victor Hedman, the second overall pick  in the draft.  The picture isn’t Creative Commons licensed, so I can’t put it on my blog, but click the link.  Seriously, you won’t regret it.

Now, I have to say that I’m not overly impressed with his face, but that physique lands him a spot on my hottie list.

Other hotties that I noticed from the draft include:

• Evander Kane from the Vancouver Giants, chosen 4th overall by the the Atlanta Thrashers.  No relation to hottie Patrick Kane of the evil, evil Chicago Blackhawks.
• Scott Glennie from the Brandon Wheat Kings, chosen 8th overall by the Dallas Stars.  Also, his howntown is Oakville!
• Peter Holland from the Guelph Storm, chosen 15th overall by the Anaheim Ducks.
• John Moore from the Chicago Steel, chosen 21st overall by the Columbus Blue Jacket.

And last but not least, the Vancouver Canucks first round pick, Jordan Schroeder of the University of Minnesota.

Welcome to the big leagues, boys. We here at NTBTWK will be watching your hotness, er, skill development closely.

So, I know the question that you are all asking about the upcoming NHL playoffs.  How many of my hockey hotties will be making post-season appearances?

Let’s take a look first at those who did not make the cut:

Hockey Hotties That Didn’t Make the Playoffs:

-His Hotness, Rick DiPietro of the NY Islanders.  In factor, Mr. DiPietro’s team was the very worst one in the entire league.  Of course, this is clearly because Ricky wasn’t bringing his hotness to game as he was out due to injuries.

-And speaking of the Islanders, when I started my hockey hotties list, hottie Mike Comrie was a NY Islander.  Apparently he got traded to Ottawa, where he still didn’t make the playoffs with the Senators.

-Following closely behind the Islanders are Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis of the Tampa Bay Lightning, the second worst team in the league.  Apparently the double-team hotness of Lecavalier and St. Louis was not enough to make the post-season.

-Mikko Koivu and Benoit Pouliot of the Minnesota Wild will also not be making a post-season appearance, having just missed the playoffs being 9th in the Western Conference.

-Brad Isbister, who last I checked was M.I.A. from the minor league team to which the Ottawa Senators sent him. So no playoff hottie team for you, Mr. Isbister!

-We also say au revior to Paul Gaustad, Derek Roy, Jason Pominville and Craig Rivet of the Buffalo Sabres, who came 10th in the East this year and thus, despite all that hotness, have started their summer vacation early.

-Also joining them on the golf course will be Dustin Brown of the 14th place LA Kings and former Canuck and current hottie Brendan Morrison of the 12th place Dallas Stars.

-Sadly, Sheldon Souray and the Edmonton Oilers did not make the playoffs and so the man who got me the most hits on my blog will not be fighting it out for Lord Stanley’s Cup this year.

-Scottie Upshall got traded from the Philadelphia Flyers, who did make the playoffs, to the Phoenix Coyotes, who did not.  Sucks to be you, Scottie.  And sucks to be me, deprived of one more hottie this playoff season.

Hotties That Did Make the Playoffs:

-Taylor Pyatt of the Canucks, of course, made the playoffs. But I’m not sure if he’ll be playing in the playoffs as his fiance died recently in a car accident in Jamaica and the team told him to take as much time as he needed to be with his family.

-The other Canuck on the Hockey Hotties list = Mattias Ohlund.

-Zach Parise’s NJ Devils not only made the playoffs but won their division, so he should be in for a few rounds of playoff action.

-Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang and the Pittsburgh Penguins came in a respectable 4th in the Easteern Conference.

-Jarome Iginla from that team my Canucks beat out for the Northwest Division championship, the Calgary Flames, makes the playoffs and scores a spot on the list o’playoff hotties

-Martin Biron of the Philadelphia Flyers will be my playoff hottie goalie, since His Hotness Rick DiPietro is unavaiable for the role.  The Flyers came in 5th in the east with a respectiable 99 points. Marty’s teammate Joffrey Lupul also makes the cut.

-Markus Naslund is playoff-bound as his New York Rangers came in 7th in the East.  Mark Bell is also a Ranger, having been claimed off of waivers from Toronto, but he’s not going to be playing in the playoffs because he’s (I’m assuming¹) still down in the minors.

-Mike Komisarek, Josh Gorges and Georges Laraque will all be in the post-season as their Montreal Canadiens just made it into the playoffs in the 8th spot in the East. (Carey Price of the Montreal Canadiens can be my backup playoff goalie).

-Chicago Blackhawks players Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane² are in contention as their team came 4th in the West.

A Playoff Team of Hotties?

Now, Darren challenged me to pick 12 of the hotties to see how they fair against the teams in his pool.  So, I pieced the following team together based on (a) whose teams are actually in the playoffs, (b) hotness and (c) the need to eliminate two of the 14 remaining hotties to get me down to the allowed number of players³.  And this is what I came up with:

My Playoff Hottie Team:

• Mattias Ohlund  -Defense – Vancouver
• Zach Parise  – LW – New Jersey
• Sidney Crosby – Centre  – Pittsburgh
• Kris Letang – Defense – Pittsburgh
• Jarome Iginla – RW  – Calgary
• Martin Biron – Goalie – Philly
• Joffrey Lupul  – RW  – Philly
• Marcus Naslund – LW – NY Rangers
• Mike Komisarek -  Defense – Montreal
• Georges Laraque – RW – Montreal
• Jonathan Toews  – Centre – Chicago
• Patrick Kane – RW – Chicago

My Playoff Predictions

This team, of course, leads me to my playoff predictions.  Unlike Darren, who tried to figure out which teams he thought would go the furthest in the playoffs and then used those predictions to choose his players, I’ve chosen my hotties and will use those players to decide which team I think will win each series.

First of all, the Canucks are going to win the Stanley Cup (even though they only have one hottie on my list⁴).  Which means a Canucks victory over the Blues.  The Blues, of course, have no hotties, so that works.

In the Blackhawks-Flames series, we have two Chicago hotties to one Flames hottie.  And I hate the Flames anyway, so the series goes to Chicago.

In the Red Wings-Blue Jackets series⁵, we have no hotties.  But I had a crush on Steve Yzerman when I was little, so the series goes to the Wings.

The Sharks-Ducks series is also devoid of hotties and so I’ll decide it the only reasonable way that one could – in a fight, a shark would totally eat a duck. Sharks take the series.

Over in the Eastern Conference, we have the following matchups:

Bruins (no hotties) vs. Canadiens (two hotties). So I’m calling an upset – the series will go to Montreal.

One Ranger hottie beats zero Capital hotties – that series goes to NY.

Similarly, one NJ hottie beats zero Carolina hotties – the Devils takes that series.

And, finally, the Penguins vs. the Flyers.  Two hotties a piece. What to do, what to do?  I think I have to pick the hotness that is Biron & Lupul over Sid the Kid and Letang.  The Flyers will win.

This will make the second round showdowns as follows:

• Canucks beating Detroit, as predicted by the 1 hottie to 0 hotties (and the fact that the Canucks are going to win the Cup, of course)
• The Blackhawks (2 hotties) will upset the hottie-less Sharks.
• The Habs will pull another upset in the second round with their 2 hotties beating the lone NJ hottie.
• The Flyers will beat the Rangers, two hotties to one.

In the third round,  the Canucks will beat the Blackhawks, of course, but what will happen in the Flyers v. Habs series? Biron & Lupul vs. Komisarek & Laraque. Tough call.  Clearly this series will go to overtime in the 7th game, but when the dust settles, I think it’s going to be a Montreal victory.

And look at that – an all-Canadian Stanley Cup!

¹Research, sme-search.
²According to some random who called in during open phones one morning on CFOX radio (surely a reliable source, no?), Patrick Kane was seen making out with a women at the Roxy after the Blackhawks-Canucks game this season.  Methinks there was a very happy cougar in Vancity that night.
³I’m not including Taylor based on not knowing if he’ll play given the death of his fiancee and I’m eliminating Gorges based on him being the least hot of my four remaining D-man – I figure 3 D-men are sufficient (and I have no idea what the required number of D-men are for a hockey pool team). See footnote 1.
⁴It’s my blog and so I make the rules.
⁵Henceforth known as the Battle Of The Primary Colours.

My Hockey Hotties post seems to have taken on a life of its own!  The first sign of this was when a whole bunch of people I didn’t recognize left comments on that posting. I mean, I know that there are always a lot of people who read a given blog regularly but don’t comment, but it seemed unlikely to me that all these lurkers were reading me for years, just waiting to comment on my opinions of the attractiveness of various hockey players.  Where were these people coming from?

The next sign was when I noticed a really drastic spike in my stats.  Like, I usually have 50-100 views per day, but on Sept 26, I had 460.  Wowsa!  Investigating further¹, I discovered that 237 of those came from “Puck Daddy” on sports.yahoo.com.  And I quote:

Drafting a fantasy hockey team by how good-looking the players are. Sadly, Yahoo! has yet to install “beefcake” as a scoring category. [Not To Be Trusted With Knives]

I have no idea how Puck Daddy found me, but I’m glad he did!

And the third and final sign that Hockey Hotties was some sort of breakthrough posting for me was when I discovered that I was listed on the WordPress “Blog of the Day” under “Growing Blogs” on September 27.

Of course, the problem with getting a spike like that is the inevitable crash. What goes up must come down and suchlike.  Today I logged into WordPress and noticed the pretty much linear decrease² since 26 Sept:

Oh, those heady days of last weekend – we knew they couldn’t last forever!

On the plus side, Hockey Hotties has now been viewed 761 times – topped only by my about page, which has been around since I first put my blog onto WordPress. Hockey Hotties  – Now With Photos! has only been viewed 106 times, which is a shame, because there are some damn fine photos on there.  But I digress.  Back on the whole stats thing for just a minute, I usually don’t pay too much attention to stats. I’m not into blogging for business³, so how many people come to my site isn’t a huge concern. It’s more like, “Cool! 100 people dropped by to hear about how often I wash my hair!”  But once you get a taste of the big numbers⁴, it’s sad to see those numbers drop. Discussion of hot boys is enough to bring the readers, but apparently videoclips of me shredding Canadian election brochures is not enough to keep them coming back for more.

Also, I should point out that the whole point of compiling a list of the hottest men in the NHL was to be able to draft a hockey pool team that I wouldn’t mind being trapped on a deserted island with.  The draft for this hockey pool was supposed to have taken place after BarCamp on Saturday but a bunch of the people who were going to take part bailed.  And thus, no draft.

But fear not, people who love hockey player hotness! Darren is now going to run a virtual draft for the hockey pool.  And so the team of hockey hotties will come to be!  And you can be sure that I’ll provide you with detailed info about which hotties end up on my team, and I’ll keep you appraised of their hot, goal scoring⁵ action all season long!

¹a.k.a., scrolling down on the WordPress Stats page
²I guess blog postings about decidedly boring historical British Columbian Premiers just isn’t as excited as blog postings about hawt men. Who knew?
³Which is a *really* good thing, because I’d be starving if I were.
⁴Those of you who get 460 views per minute may guffaw now.
⁵Or goal saving, in the case of my goalie. Who I really, really hope will be His Hotness, Mr. Rick DiPietro. Rawr!